Ecological Colonialism: A study of the sociocultural context surrounding Biosphere 2

Abstract

This paper examines the trajectory of the key figures and the sociopolitical context in which the Biosphere 2 project (1987) took shape, situating them within the framework of the American counterculture of the late 1970s and its shift from San Francisco to New Mexico as part of the ‘back-to-the-land’ communal movement.

The main hypothesis argues that initiatives such as Biosphere 2, far from constituting a socio-ecological alternative to the dominant system, operated as an extension of the logic of the US military-industrial complex. Under a countercultural aesthetic and an apparently emancipatory discourse, these types of projects incorporated principles derived from the colonising imagination of the space race, contributing to the legitimisation of forms of environmental and technological control.

The methodology employed is based on an interdisciplinary historiographical and genealogical approach, integrating critical architectural history, science and technology studies, aesthetic theory and environmental thought, while addressing the social, technical and cultural implications of Biosphere 2.

The results demonstrate the decisive influence that the space program had as an underlying ethical principle in the early days of sustainable design and the environmental movement in the West. Furthermore, it is shown that the New Communalist movement did not constitute a break with the dominant culture, but rather an extension of its adaptive logics, through the production and circulation of technological imaginaries that reconfigured environmentalism in terms of technical management and environmental experimentation.